Congratulate Ms Rachael McMahon and her husband Cormac on the birth of their son just before Christmas

Welcome Ms Brid Maher who is teaching Junior Infants while Ms McMahon is on maternity leave

Wish Angela Ryan a speedy recovery and look forward to her return

Wish the school choir the best of luck at their performance in the Peace Proms Concert in the RDS on Saturday next at 2 00 pm.

School Self Evaluation

Maths for Fun will recommence on Wednesday 25th February for the pupils of First and Second Class with a training day on Wednesday 18th February (10 am to 11 am). This initiative is proving very worthwhile and was a tremendous success before Christmas. The success of the programme is dependent on parents (or grandparents) volunteering to help. If you would like to become involved in this round please contact the school office by phone or email by Friday 6th February. It involves volunteering for one or two hours (depending on the number of parents willing to help) on a Wednesday morning for four weeks.

Senior Infants have started the Literacy Lift Off programme. This is an intensive twelve week programme of reading and writing. Mrs Harding, along with Ms D’Arcy, Ms Crowley, Mrs Bergin. Ms Maher and Ms Leamy work with a small group of children for 45 minutes three times a week. The pupils read lots of books at their own level of competency and develop new strategies and reading skills. This increases the complexity of what the pupils can do in both reading and writing. First Class completed the Literacy Lift Off programme before Christmas and it has proved to be extremely beneficial.

Grandparents Day

In conjunction with Catholic Schools Week our school celebrated Grandparents Day on Tuesday. The pupils of First and Sixth Class invited their grandparents to the school. The event started with a short prayer service celebrated by School Chaplin Michael Harding. Following this the pupils brought the grandparents to the classrooms where they had lots of interesting things to see and do.

In First Class the pupils made flowers with their grandparents photograph in the centre of them. The children also made certificates and wrote poems to give to their grandparents. The pupils created booklets in which they had lots of questions about school life and family life years ago and how it differs to now. On the back of the booklet each child and grandparent drew their hand – this was a lovely memento of the day.

In Sixth Class we the pupils were delighted with the opportunity to show our grandparents how much they mean to us. We loved showing them around our classroom and it was fun to see them sitting at our desks – They didn’t get any homework though. We presented them with a special poem and shared our favourite memories of them.

Following this there were light refreshments in the hall.

Catholic Schools Week

To celebrate Catholic Schools Week we are participating in a number of events:

On Wednesday morning the pupils from 2nd Class to 6th Class were invited to participate in the morning Mass in St Cronan’s Church. Many of our parents and grandparents joined us for the mass.

At assembly we are celebrating Catholic Schools Week with its theme “Called to Serve”. Each morning the teacher leading assembly reads a short reflection with an emphasis on love, kindness, joy, truth and justice and we all pray for a special intention.

Christmas Sale

Following on from last month’s newsletter a total of €1618.62 was raised at the Christmas Sale by 6th Class – well done all. The children donated €200 to past pupil Keelan Flynn who came to the class to talk about her trip to India with the Hope Foundation.

Green Schools

We were delighted with a visit from Paul Davey, a parent and owner of the local garden centre. Paul gave a very informative talk to the 3rd and 4th Class pupils, and had the children enraptured with the wealth of his knowledge. The children learned some new facts and asked many interesting questions. Paul accompanied the Green Schools Committee on a walk in the woods to decide the most advantageous position for our bug hotel. He also kindly presented us with an apple tree which he planted in the car park – Thank you Paul.

Tommy made some birdhouses recently from timber. The pupils from Aoibhneas along with 5th Class pupils divided into groups to paint the birdhouses. There is great rivalry between the groups as Tommy has sponsored a prize to the group whose birdhouse gets the first resident.

Fallon Library Books

We were delighted to be recipients of a number of books from Roscrea People at the Roscrea People of the Year Awards. It is great to see the library growing – Thank you George and Roscrea People.

School News

Sixth Class are learning about World War 2, including the Anne Frank story. We worked on a biography of her hiding place- it was amazing! We have a very exciting project at the moment – we are working on a short film as part of the “FÍS Film Project” – keep an eye out for updates – the Oscars are coming up!! …………… Fifth Class are enjoying DEAR Time (Drop Everything And Read) and learning all about the famine. We are going to make our own famine ships too! We also learned about chocolate – yum yum – and all about Australia for Australia Day……………..Fourth Class have just finished reading James and the Giant Peach and love going to the Fallon Library on Fridays when we can choose a book………….Third Class are delighted to have our projects on Natural Wonders displayed on the corridor outside our classroom, some of the topics covered were The Northern Lights, K2 Mountain, the Giants Causeway …….Second Class loved our projects on Australia and some of us brought in things connected with Australia like boomerangs, books, Kangaroo and Koala teddies, even two didgeridoos! We researched the cost of flights to Australia and what cities we might visit on the way. Flying first class to Oz costs an average of €9000 return! G’day Mate!……………….First Class are loving indoor hurling with Ms Higgins. In Maths we are learning all about length, width, halves and equal to! We are delighted with our art display of our penguin pictures and the information booklet we made to go with the pictures……………..In Senior Infants we were learning about electricity and circuits. We also learned about the owl – we wrote our own stories about them and Keeva brought in an owl sculpture from her garden.………Junior Infants had great fun in Science making some yummy experiments – we made jelly and rice krispy buns – we had just as much fun eating them as we did making them! In art we made and decorated lovely umbrellas. We also learned lots of songs and poems and even danced to “I Like to Move It” in assembly…..Aoibhneas Class 1 and 2 were thrilled with the snow earlier this month and had great fun making snowmen. We are delighted to see some of the daffodils we planted earlier in the year peeping up from the ground.